


Bend to Your Will

by SpicyWalrus



Series: A Dollar at a Time [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, M/M, Pole Dancing, lots of chemistry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyWalrus/pseuds/SpicyWalrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan and Shepard start to, more or less, fizzle out of control. </p><p> </p><p>  <em>Almost.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bend to Your Will

**Author's Note:**

> second part to One Taste of You, My Magdalena. kaidan is a pole dancer. him and shepard have a thing

Turns out, Kaidan is a rather gracious lover. Possessing every part of Shepard with every touch and caress, every kiss and look. The way his lips part and he exhales when he's absorbed in the contact.

Doesn't mean they've, well... _"screwed"_ , yet.

There's a reserve between them. It's a barrier of ethics that keeps them alive and well, keeps Shepard coming back to their little odd friendship ratio of lust and light conversation at the bar. Two parts friend, one part wanted.

Kaidan is a dark star. Shepard's felt like he's been looking forever, and when he wasn't looking, when he didn't _care_ , he was taken somewhere unfamiliar and his world seemed to change before his eyes. He found what he was looking for.

Kaidan hadn't told Shepard where he'd been, how much he's gotten around, his last lover, or about any of his friends. He just kept that same reserve and came unto Shepard with an unconditional quo of kissing on the mouth but still coughing down sleeves. Shepard had found a needle in the haystack.

Now, didn't mean he was searching for some high-class looking, broad-shouldered delicacy, 100% Canadian beauty (which, Shepard laughed once and commented on how "American" he spoke. Kaidan laughed, too). But, like all stories he'd never been told, Shepard still found just that. Silken skin and a mouth that still was kept for kissing in privacy at most times.

But Kaidan was no angel.

He smoked like a lightning struck cornfield, something like that, and probably could eat for eternities. He was kind and no, he didn't smell like any cigarette-musked-leather or some earthy tones of bergamot. No, he had a distinct smell of nothing but his taste. Which, when thought about, Shepard would curse himself for finding a terrible contradictory cliche for his muse.

Parts and parts of Shepard could fall apart at one little notion from the man, though, like some siren's controlling song, a moth caught up in a widow's web. The way his hips swayed when he walked, leading with them, the way he laughed, the endless eyes of an abyss Shepard could fall into forever... Everything about him became everything about Shepard.

On the other hand, Kaidan could say many things the same and different for Shepard.

He absolutely, unequivocally, provocatively _loved_ the way he kept so unapproachable.

Sentience was Shepard's way of getting by it seemed, and to crack that mask was a guilty, rather dark pleasure of Kaidan's. And flirting with the man just brought him closer to the edge. Shepard could bait into the water and never get the hint, never understand fully on the outside.

But since diving deep into that mind, into that temptation pulled from stasis, Kaidan knew how to push his buttons.

Shepard loved it at first. Now he hates it ad it tears him apart int he best way. So if he likes it, he must not hate it, right?

Wrong.

At nights when Shepard visits over again to Kaidan's work, to his rounds of grace and crowd-seducing, Kaidan would make eyes contact with him over and over, single him out in unfamiliar crowds. But when people had seen the show of him crawling and sliding down the pole just to expose his neck, his skin stretched against his muscles in the dim light, his vulnerability that was there for _Shepard_ , Kaidan quit the act and kept just the hints at other people that would drive Shepard crazy. To make him embrace him tight in the after hours and push him against the wall just to bite at his neck, mark him in a fit of usually uncharacteristic need for someone who was _his_.

Kaidna loved it.

They played the game well, they kept distance and kept un-jealous, but still committed in this taboo way.

You see, Kaidan doubted the potential of them getting any further away from each other. And that statement itself states that they really couldn't be any closer this way, so the passionate latter between primal and chaste would further them from what already was, it seemed.

Because late night kisses and strokes down the sides and shuddering breaths kept them satisfied, and with the dances, too? If you asked Shepard, he still hasn't gotten used to that head-spinning curve of Kaidan's back when he's bending back up the pole.

He hopes he never will.

* * *

The sky is dark and Kaidan's want is excruciating tonight. He's put on a rather disorienting show, something extraordinary with everything turned from his enigmatic sensuality to something sexual. Something vulgar.

All because Shepard is there after a time spent away hunting for jobs to outpay his rent held up my odd jobs here and there.

Kaidan missed his stoic face and the bite of his lip.

And when he's ending, when he knows his half-hour shift is going kaput, politely fizzling out of perfect control and exploding in a finale, he forgets to constrict his voice and he _moans_ against the thrum of music.

Shepard has seen the way his lips move that way before, and though the noise is drown out, he knows what's come from those lips.

It's only a minute or two until they can get back to somewhere far more private, Shepard tells himself.

* * *

They frenzy in kisses and touches on a windowsill bed, a little place where the curtains are opened so high up, where the wide window is open and the air is curious again tonight.

The lighting is dim like the club, but serene in the deep, mute violet that comes from the city skies.

"Do you smoke after sex?" Shepard asks between the kisses Kaidan assures will bruise his neck in blossoming purple and red.

Kaidan stops and furrows his brow like always, mouth parted in a half-smile from the pondering in his head. His smile fades and he shrugs. "I dunno, baby, I've never looked," and nuzzles the side of Shep's face.

Shepard laughs and nearly forgets about the straining in his pants, Kaidan giggles and shakes his head as he leans an arm out the windowsill to test the cool air, falling beside Shepard on the little half-bed.

Shepard leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, feeling the mood tone down into a neutral affectionate silence again, a small thrum in the connection between the two. A little rolling boil of chemistry. He still lets his chest rumble the slightest, just for a moment.

When he opens his eyes, the first thing he glances at in his still spot is Kaidan's staring face, a little seemingly satisfied smile spreading slow onto his lips. "What," Shepard hums, lifting his head slightly, a brow raised.

"Hmm," Kaidan sighs low, crawling a small space between them to place a lingering kiss to Shepard's parted lips, taking his sight in, his presence, his company. It's nice to have someone around that really cares. "Nothing," he says.

"Bullshit," Shepard smiles, pulling back from Kaidan's now grinning face.

He has the nicest, realest smile. Something comes to in Shepard's head like a camera rolling, like a clear picture has been exposed for too long and he's just now seeing the dream behind the ink.

He smiles, too, sweet and like he hasn't felt in a long time. "I'm happy we're a thing," he wants to say. But he doesn't, and just lets himself fall into Kaidan's space, feels the arms that wrap around him and stroke idle patterns into his skin as he sits with an arm slung around his shoulder, the window open like they're framed together in a demure, snugly fitting picture on a perfect wall.

Shepard wonders how he sold his soul for such a feeling, how he didn't see such a move coming when Kaidan had kissed him that night.

It hasn't been long, not _too_ long, yet it also feels like it's been eternities since Kaidan's eyes finally showed that want, that need for someone.

Just two lonely souls in a big, ugly city.

But from up here, in Kaidan's apartment, it isn't too ugly. It's almost... pretty. Like Kaidan's presence drives away the images of rotten people and the reality of where they truly dwelled in. It was all just a big game, right?

That thought leaves Shepard grim as he bids Kaidan goodnight, makes his way back out of his apartment and back to the flats of the city that Shepard dreams away in black and white for.

Kaidan's hand lingers at the edge of the window bed, he sits in the position he thought he'd leave, that one push needed just to approach Shepard again and take him back, invite him to Kaidan's bed and...

Kaidan smiles to himself silently, and he feels not so lonely.

Yet he feels so, so alone.


End file.
